Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

The so called me is very much a slice of the life of its author in New Jersey.

It’s quite a plain site but that “do it yourself” feeling refects the content of the blog very well. This is very much “life as it really is” which isn’t what you find in a lot of blogs these days and it makes it more unique for that.

You’ll get tales of the trials and tribulations of raising a two-year old, visiting mom, and the like.

Anyway, a place to look to see what normal life in New Jersey is actually like.

This little link train is perhaps one of the most interesting that I’ve come across to date. Kelly Cho just tagged me this morning and I’ll follow their example in tagging several blogs outside the usual link trains to see the effect.

~Start Copying Here~

Alexa Redirect Train by Carl Ocab

Rules:

• Put anything you like above this list Chit Chat, talkies, introduce what this is.
• Start copying on the ~Start Copying Here~’ and copy all the things listed without removing the links (Of course, the train would be no use without those links)
• Move all the sites labeled Newcomers’ to the list labeled Oldies’.
• Add 5 sites that you want to include in the train and make their Visit My Site’ link like this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.kellycho.com then invite them to join the train.
• Visit all the listed sites using the Visit My Site link. (That’s not much work! Remember, if you plant good seeds they will also grow good) and look at your high Alexa ranking next week!

Newcomers:

An Age of Magic – Visit My Site
Off the Vine – Visit My Site
Europe a la Carte – Visit My Site
An Island Life – Visit My Site
Frenchless in France – Visit My Site
Anitokid – Visit My Site Link train

Oldies:

Foreign Perspectives – Visit My Site
Carl Pei – Visit My Site
Swapw – Visit My Site
Life of a School Bus Driver – Visit My Site
Tamiki – Visit My Site
Bobs’ Reformat This – Visit My Site
Shawn Knight – Visit My Site
Kelly Cho – Visit My Site
John Chow dot com – Visit My Site
DoshDosh.com – Visit My Site
Jane May Blogs – Visit My Site
Ms. Danielle – Visit My Site
Stock Trading 101 – Visit My Site
Ed Lau – Visit My Site
Derrich.com – Visit My Site
Nate Whitehill – Visit My Site
Gary Lee – Visit My Site
Make Money Online with a 13-year Old – Visit My Site

~End Copying Here~

One of the advantages of the various link exchange schemes that I’ve been getting involved in lately is that I come across quite a different range of blogs than I would have done otherwise and have been pinching good ideas all over the place as you’ve seen from the changes in the site.

Anyway, the latest one of these is Infektia.net which runs through quite a range of things in a stream of mostly short posts. She’s also running a mutual blog review project which should bring a few more blogs to my notice over the coming weeks.

Interestingly, for me, is that she’s actively searching out for places running sponsored post schemes which is something of an interest for me at the moment. Don’t panic about there being a glut of sponsored posts here though as I’m very picky about such things.

Anyway, worth a look if you want to see what a more “girly” blog can look like.

Assorted link trains seem to be the flavour of the season from the original Technorati Favourites Exchange (still plugging a way a month down the line), to the MyBlogLog train  (on a slower line) and now we have the BlogCatalog My Neighbourhood train which I came across at SYAF the Geek just yesterday. 

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found this list and include a link back to that blog.

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take My New Neighborhoods Members’ and move them into the The Original Neighborhoods Members’ list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, join their Blogcatalog Neighborhoods and add them to the My New Neighborhoods Members’ section. Remember to also add the Join this Neighborhood’ link next to your new blogs. ( Example: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/syaf-the-geek.html )

5) Join as a member to each Neighborhoods listed here by clicking on Join this Neighborhood’. The goal is that all of the new Members listed will join your neighborhood, and you should do the same!

My New Neighborhoods Members

The originals

1. Foreign Perspectives Join This Neighborhood
2. MdRafi2k Join This Neighborhood
3. ByDesign Join This Neighborhood
4. Blog To Profit Join This Neighborhood
5. Another Maria Join This Neighborhood
6. Webee Join This Neighborhood
7. Zakman Join This Neighborhood
8. One Eyed View Join This Neighborhood
9. Syaf The Geek Join this Neighborhood
10. Esplanade Join This Neighborhood
11. Wampago Join This Neighborhood
12. WonderWoman Join This Neighborhood
13. Kucau Join This Neighborhood
14. Cymru66 Join This Neighborhood

***End Copying Here***

As ‘yall know, I’ve been one of the participants of the Technorati Favourites Exchange (TFX) over the last few weeks which had the aim of getting a whole bunch of people into the top 100 favourited blogs list on Technorati. It’s been very successful too with the composition of that top 100 changing entirely.

So far, I’ve not yet made it as the barrier seems to move up every time I think I’m about to get in at number 100 but I’m not really that bothered as I’ve learnt far more over the last couple of weeks about promoting FP than I would otherwise have done in months if not years. Anyway, I thought I’d share some of that with you here.

First off, it’s very clear that the way to go with the adsense ads is the big square block that you see on FP these days. That’s the one that all the big money making blogs use and when we talk big money, one clocked up $8500 in March.

Getting the traffic up is key to that $8500 of course and with that in mind I’m pleased to see that the link exchanges that are part and parcel of the TFX have moved me into the top 40k of blogs with well over 100 incoming links to date. If you get the chance, it’s definitely worthwhile participating in one of the many link trains around.

What’s also quite useful in increasing the income from the blog/website is to improve the ranking of Alexa and Google. Now, google is staffed with some smart cookies so it’s not too easy to outsmart them and, by and large, what you need to do is to bump up the number of incoming links over a period of time. Naturally that means that your Google ranking isn’t going to go from zero to seven in a couple of months and indeed it’s taken me about eight months to get to PR4 with FP and, all being well, it’ll be at PR5 or perhaps PR6 at the next review (due around July).

However, Alexa is a completely different story. What’s clear is that being in the top 100k sites in Alexa brings in significant cash benefits in that people are prepared to pay more for links from such a site, for you to write articles about them, etc. if you’re in that top 100k. The Alexa people seem to be a completely dumber bunch than those at Google (sorry guys, but it looks like that from here) though and it seems to sufficient merely to download the Alexa toolbar and just look at your own site. Doing that has knocked off 100k from my ranking in a matter of days and I’m not even milking it by just sitting and hitting refresh either. Will it be possible to get into the top 100k doing that though? I think it will as friends of ours with a broadly similar “real” readership are bouncing along at around 100k yet with the location of the readership obviously completely squewed by them accessing their own pages.

What’s also clear is that there’s a whole lot of people out there who think that throwing together a blog is a doddle as everything is totally automated. Well, not quite everything is automated and I’ve picked up loads of great ideas from looking at the various blogs participating in the TFX which I’m gradually incorporating into FP.

If anyone’s interested, I can do a little technical review of their site and point out the various things that they could usefully do to get the traffic up. All I’m asking for the moment is that you do a little article mentioning Foreign Perspectives on your own blog. I’ll consider reviewing non-blog sites too but that would be a chargeable thing.